


Down the rabbit hole.

by EbonyMortisRose



Series: The story of Dylan Jackal & Mr Hyde [3]
Category: Vampyr (Video Game)
Genre: Dark Humor, Learning how to use abilites the hard way, Mental link with sire, Mild Language, My OC Dylan Jackal - Mary Reids husband, Swearing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-15
Updated: 2020-07-15
Packaged: 2021-03-04 22:09:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,023
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25283653
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EbonyMortisRose/pseuds/EbonyMortisRose
Summary: Dylan wakes up in the catacombs under Paris, where he had crawled after devouring an elder Ekon. The powerful blood gave him back his sense of self.He knows now he is a man, not a monster, even though his outward appearance would argue otherwise.Let's hope the creatures that lurk in the dark here with him, still consider him one of their own.
Series: The story of Dylan Jackal & Mr Hyde [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1821553





	Down the rabbit hole.

**Author's Note:**

> The continuing story of my OC from the Vampyr discord server. (artwork added at the bottom. )

He was back there, home, safe. In that comforting scene he clung to in the trenches, of reading to his dear expectant wife, in front of an open fire at their home in England.  
But something was different about this scene. There was the same feeling of contentment, but 'his' head rested on someone's shoulder and 'someone', was reading to him.  
He listened, recognising at once the soothing English baritone of his friend Henry. He tried to concentrate on the words, but the more he tried to focus, the more muffled they became.  
He glances over at the fire and realises even though it was burning bright, he couldn't feel it's warm. So he just sat and watched the shadows dance across the hearth rug. Like black silhouettes of bare tree, flicking back and forth.

Then, along with a growing sense of dread, those same shadows twisted, becoming talon-like fingers creeping slowly across the carpeted surface. They began to elongate, farther than the flames casting them should allow.  
Continuing to stretch out over the edge of the rug, then onto the hardwood floor towards them.  
He wanted to move, to cry out. To warn Henry that something bad was coming.  
Though henrys words were incomprehensible, he felt a sudden wave of concern from the man. An unspoken urgency to focus on his words. He strained to pick out any syllables through the fog of mounting dread and heard.  
  
 _'"Man, not monster."_  
  
As the shadow touched his foot, hanging over the side of the sofa, he couldn't help but shiver. Even though his foot was clothed in a hardy boot, he could feel it through the leather. It was like hundreds of insects scurrying up his very nerve endings.  
He watches, unable to move, as the clawed shadow began to smoothly glide up his calf. As the hand reached his inner thigh, it brought with it unspoken promises of relief. Of ecstasy only found in blood, in the thrill of the hunt, of the kill.  
He heard himself begin to pant and ran his tongue over his serrated teeth.  
Henry's pleas and dialogue were now drowned out by the addition of a sudden pounding by his ear. He turns his head looking for the source, and his hungry eyes lock onto that pulsing artery on henrys pale neck. It was so close, so tempting.  
He lets out an unashamed groan as the shadow reaches and strokes his crotch.  
  
 _"Hungry, feed me"._ It whispers.  
  
His eyes focus longingly on that thrumming pulse point and his vision shifts into hunter, reds and greys. Making that delicious river glow like the coals in a fire and before he sank his fangs into that throbbing heat, he was sure he heard Henry say once more.  
  
 _"Man, not monster."_  
  
He opens his eyes to darkness and when nothing comes into view begins to panic, blinking furiously.  
  
 _Mon Dieu! have i gone Blind?_  
  
His hands pat the surface he's sat on and he feels cold damp stone, roughly cut. There's the faint stench of urine and feces and he remembers he's in a sewer tunnel.  
But something was obstructing his sense of smell. He feels his face, probing the damp outline of the gas mask he had taken from, _Oh, god!_ That poor boy. The one he had murdered!.  
He remembers how he had taken it from the boy. Not only to hide his monstrous visage, he was now aware of. But to keep as a reminder of what the beast made him do, and to 'never' to do it again. As long as he wore that mask, he was a man, if only on the inside he told himself.  
He was shaken from his thoughts by what sounded like a baby crying, somewhere deep in the tunnels. His rational mind suggested that it couldn't be a child, but perhaps a fox?  
He slowly rose to his feet, using the wall at his back for leverage, trying to make as little sound as possible. The thing then cried out again. Closer now, and he knew in his gut that was no fox.  
The new bestial part of him, the thing inside that had torn those men last night to shreds grunted in the back of his mind. It wanted to take over, it wanted to track, to dive into the void in front of him, and tear apart the prey.  
He was going to give in to its wants, this underworld was no place for a man. He was scared. It was not.  
Then like a lingering fragment of the dream Henrys words rang in his ears, no, not in his ears his mind.  
  
 _'Go to sleep, go to sleep, go to sleep my little monster'._  
  
They resonated in his skull in a sing-song tone, like the mockery of a lullaby.  
  
 _'Henry?'_  
  
 _'Dylan?'_  
  
He suddenly gets a sensation of shock, then elation. But there was nothing for him to be surprised or happy about, especially at the moment. Were they even his feelings? Of course they were his, who else's would they be?  
With fists clenched trying to get hold of his mounting fear, he lets his vision shift once more, like in the dream, into that red and black sight. The action he finds was as easy as blinking.  
He can hear the drip of water down long-abandoned tunnels and can make out in this inky void, little scurrying masses of rats down a tunnel to his left.  
They appear as tiny bobbing beacons of red light and he's suddenly so thirsty, they make him lick his lips.  
He then remembers he crawled into the sewer entrance on the banks of the River Seine.  
Yes, that's right. He was overcome with exhaustion after he had killed those hunters and something else. The taste of it still lingers on his tongue, so rich, no wine could compare to it divine texture. He longed for more of it.  
He ran his tongue out over his lips, trying to savor every last remnant of that meal.  
The thing in the dark howled again, now sounding more like something in abject agony. It reverberated along the tunnel towards him, causing all his hairs on his body to stand on end.  
Every bestial sense in his body screamed enemy, fight or flee! He found his body had already decided on the next course of action, not waiting for clarification from his brain.  
Something told him the direction he suddenly launched himself into was right, that, that way lead to safety. Lead to... Henry?

His bare feet begin to splash through a shallow river of fetid water and sludge. The stench when his feet break the crust covered surface is so palpable he can almost chew it. But he realises he can't blame the sewer water alone for the bad odour.  
He was radiating a god awful miasma of smells too. Stale sweat, mixed with rotten meat and bad eggs. As soon as he gets out of here he thinks, I'm running straight into the river to wash.  
To aid his traverse through this abyssal world, he begins to runs his hands along the grimy walls. focusing on the fleeing rats, using them as little red flashing guides to a possible exit.  
The monstrous howl was then joined by a second and then a third. In this confide space it sounded like Cerberus himself was on his trail.  
  
 _'Mary had a little lamb, little lamb, little, lamb. Mary had a little lamb, the skals all want to eat!'_  
  
 _'I've lost my god damn mind!'_  
  
 _'sanity is overrated'_  
  
Henrys sing-song voice rang in his head, as he stumbled along, franticly feeling his way. He was thankful he didn't have to breathe, as he felt his lungs would be burning right now though the panicked exertion he was putting his body through.  
His adrenaline pumped brain flashed images on the insides of his eyelids of creatures, similar to what he saw in his own reflection, but still crazed, still rabid. They were once people just like him. But he knew all they saw when they looked at him, was fresh meat. There was no reasoning with them.  
They, he, had a name for such a creature, Skal's. Again this information was just there in his mind. someone else's knowledge.  
He found his new eyesight was excellent in the dark, zoning in on every heat source, no matter how small. Probably given a fraction of light in a darkened room he thought, it would seem to him like midday.  
But right now, down here in the bowels of hell there were no light sources, and he's so focused on their little fleeing forms he doesn't realise they have scurried into a crack in the masonry wall until he collides painfully with it.  
He staggers back, cursing. Then feels the very solid wall in front of him. Watching with dismay as the rats lights fade and quickly becomes engulfed into this ink-filled world.  
He begins to probe the stonework, looking for loose bricks, but finding none.  
The blood and flesh he had consumed last night began to churn in his stomach, as panic started to take hold.  
He squinted into the blackness around him, looking for any other sources to follow. Something pulled at him beckoning him to continue on, to ignore his human senses, they were only clouding his judgment.  
But he couldn't fight the realisation that he was lost. Alone in the dark, with only the howling dead for company.  
Like a blind man reading brail, he begins once more to run his hands over the slimy walls as he continues on. Following that invisible line, that comforting tug.  
After about ten minutes, which feels like an hour, he starts to notice the slow change in the stonework from rough carved stone. to more modern brick.  
He then stumbles and can't stop himself giving out a sharp yell, as he trips over a fallen piece of masonry, causing a jolt of pain to shoot up his barefoot. It was accompanied by a small crunch sound and he was sure he had just broken a couple of toes. Cursing, rubbing the throbbing appendage. He takes a moment to risk looking over his shoulder, only to be greeted by a writhing mass of red pulsing hearts, veins and arteries scrambling towards him.  
He was also glad at that moment he no longer needed to defecate because he was damn sure he would have soiled himself.  
He then hears henrys voice yell in his clipped British accent.  
  
 _'Cry havoc, and let slip the dogs of war!'_  
  
"Oh Merde!" The pain in his foot now forgotten, he staggers on and sees up head a dim mote of light, like a torch from the heavens.  
As he gets closer he can see its moonlight streaming down through the cracks in a manhole cover high above. But to his dismay, he saw that the ladder used to climb in and out had rusted and snapped off.  
The major sections of the runs lay at his feet, the remainder was at least fifteen foot up. He knows it's too far to reach but that doesn't stop him trying to jump up and swipe frantically at fresh air.  
  
 _'Poor Alice stuck down the rabbit hole.'_  
  
He growls in frustration and yells. "Henry, if this is you and I've not gone completely insane. Unless you can offer anything useful, shut up!"  
He looks at the broken ladder and thinks to try and use it as a two-pronged spear. But knows it was too cumbersome to wield.  
The creatures are only a few feet away now, so close he is overcome with the foul stench of rot and decay, rolling off them in waves. Assaulting his senses, even through his masks filter.  
  
My god, was he once like? Wait, he still was one of them. He had survived for god knows how long down here, no doubt fighting off any rivals to his territory like any rabid dog.  
The idea that springs to mind is utter madness, but he had left the shores of sanity along time ago. So he slips the gas mask up onto his forehead.  
His sight now not encumbered by the goggles on the mask, could now distinguish the writhing horde of the damned, into three distinct creatures.  
He knew they could smell fear, sense weakness. He had to burry that deep, try to push away the graphic thoughts that he would soon know what it would feel like to be torn apart with those familiar deadly teeth.  
He pulls himself to his full height, rolls back his shoulders, and makes direct eye contact with the scrambling abomination that was slightly in front of the other two.  
Thankful, that all he was relying on was his heat sense and that he could not actually make out any features of the rotting abomination descending on him.  
Claws extended and teeth bared, he then lets out an almighty snarl. What rips out of his throat, however, is not the banshee-like scream they had emitted earlier.  
But instead was a very human yell, more akin to a mighty cry of frustration.  
It does however to his utter surprise stop the advance of the creatures and for a few beats of their undead hearts, he actually thinks it's worked.  
That's it he thought, I'm the alpha! He couldn't help but smile.  
Then he hears a snigger, that turns into an outright laugh echoing in his skull. As he watches the trio turn to look at each other, then bow their own heads and answer with their own gut-wrenching cries.  
The sound is almost like a physical blow to his ears in this enclosed space and even makes his stagger back.  
  
"OH MERDE!"!  
  
The laughing in his head continues as they once more scramble towards him. He spins slamming down the mask and looks up at the distant means of escape, then back at the fast-approaching hounds from hell.  
  
"Merde, Merde Merde!"  
  
 _'Are you laughing, really? I'm about to get torn to shreds and your laughing!'_  
  
 _'You are not one of them anymore, welcome to the world through the looking glass Alice.'_  
  
 _'Your insane!'_  
  
' _All the best people are.'_  
  
As a last-ditch attempt to defend himself, he picks up the broken ladder and hauls it with great effort at the screeching creatures. The rusted end hits the lead one in the chest, and as the other two try to push past it, they impale it further.  
But even with four foot of rusted ladder sticking out of its chest it still presses forward. Oblivious to the obstacle, driven by rabid hunger, arms outstretched towards him.  
As it charges forward the bottom of the ladder begins to scrape along the stone floor, creating a sound like nails on a chalkboard setting his teeth on edge.  
He looks back up at the manhole again as if hoping by some miracle the remnants of the ladder would have extended. Or that he had missed any other means of escape in his panicked state.  
This is it he thought, I'm going to die. Goodbye, my love.  
  
 _'Jump.'_  
  
 _'What?'_  
  
 _'Jump my little rabbit.'_  
  
 _'I AM NOT A FUCKING RABBIT, YOU MAD ENGLISH BASTARD!!'_  
  
 _'Focus on the ladder, and **JUMP!'**_  
  
That last word was blasted at him with such urgency he couldn't help but obey. He reached out to the last rung on the ladder, like a man drowning, reaching for a saving hand and screwed up his eyes, and jumped.  
His hand clasped onto something solid and to his utter amazement, he found he was holding onto the second to last rung of the ladder.  
Quickly he brought his other hand up to meet it and hugged it for dear life. letting out a manic laugh.  
His elation was short-lived however as he felt a cold hand grab his foot and sink its razor-like talons into his flesh.  
He looked down to see one of the creatures in a desperate attempt to get to its prey, had scrambled over the back of the one impaled by the ladder, and had made a leap for him. Catching hold of his dangling foot.  
The old ladder was not liking this additional weight and began to creak ominously.  
Quickly he began to kick at the things hand on his foot. Clawing at it with his own talon-like toenails.  
  
"GET OFF, YOU UGLY PIECE OF SHIT!!"  
  
He could feel blood running down his foot from where the creature hand sunk in its claws, and the tinny scent in the air seemed to throw those below into a renewed frenzy.  
He watched as another of the creatures began to scramble over the impaled one, and use the thing that was grabbing his foot as an unliving rope.  
The ladder gave another warning creak, threatening at any moment to send him tumbling down into the black sea and the waiting mouths of the ravenous horde below.  
There were about another twenty runs up this ladder to the manhole cover, and once more he willed every fiber in his being towards that goal. He blinked and felt himself shoot forward once more.  
  
"MEEEEEERDE!!!"  
  
He hits the manhole cover with such ferocity, he was sure he felt his skull crack. He flew from the hell hole like a cork from a bottle of champagne. Landing with a _humph_ , on the roadside. The metal cover joining him seconds later, clanking noisily inches from his head.  
He rolls onto his back, looking at the beautiful sight of the night sky above and can't help barking out a laugh. "I'm alive! haha!!"  
  
 _'I have some bad news for you.'_  
  
 _'What?'_  
  
 _'You're not alive'_  
  
 _'I'm going to find you Henry, and I'm going to rip your god damn throat out for doing this to me!'_  
  
 _'Promises, promises.'_  
  
He lays there, probably looking like a week old corpse that has been hit by a cart. Not wanting this fragile moment of peace to end, but knows he has to move. He then sniffs and thinks, and get a bath, a long, long soak in a bath.  
  



End file.
